Taking its title from Roberto Rossellini’s stark Neo-Realist film of 1945, this exhibition charts the history of development of the street photograph from the 1950s on.

Its starting point is the raw and edgy photographs produced by Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, William Klein, and Garry Winogrand, who were instrumental in the development of a radical, new approach to documentary photography. For these and other artists, including Daido Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki, Nigel Henderson, and William Eggleston, the street fascinates as a theater of human activity.

"Open City" reflects the diversity of work that the street has inspired, ranging from Terence Donovan’s advertising and fashion photography to Susan Meiselas’s photographs of war-torn areas of Nicaragua, and Raghubir Singh’s vibrant and colorful images of his native India.

The exhibition concludes with works from the 1980s and 1990s by photographers who, influenced by the conceptual art of preceding decades, have turned the camera on its itself, rethinking the traditions of the street genre and of the photographic apparatus. Jeff Wall, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Nikki S. Lee, Catherine Opie, Allan Sekula, Beat Streuli, Thomas Struth and Wolfgang Tillmans are representative of this newer generation of artists. [/] Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Washington, DC